How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command • Hacker News Board

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#11

Post by s_gourichon » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:51 AM UTC

Long story short, this is related to keeping focus when you're working as a freelancer, with the same laptop used for work and personal life.

There's a simple solution that has been working well for me for years: have 2 local accounts on the machine, with everything separated, even different visual themes (like, bright for personal time, grey for professional time), and a different base color, e.g. blue and green.

On principle the pro account has no login on any of the websites where I have a personal account and vice versa. Same for e-mails.

That way, when on the pro account, no personal notification, only professional stuff, and vice versa. Has been helping me being concentrating on pro stuff for the last 4 years.

To be precise, the separation is not totally strict, but it does not have to be 100% to be effective. Visual theme and only relevant notifications make a big part of the benefit.

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#12

Post by jks » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 10:03 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #2

I'd like something I could use to lock me out of everything but a whitelisted set of programs & websites for a set period of time. I can't tell you what a relief it would be to have little choice but to focus on work tasks instead of get distracted. Sure, I would need to have the key to the lock in case I really needed it, but it would need to be something mildly time consuming, like answering a set of relatively sim…

Freedom (https://freedom.to) sounds like the app for this need.

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#13

Post by TheMightyLlama » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

blockmarker wrote: post #7

ineedasername wrote: post #2

I'd like something I could use to lock me out of everything but a whitelisted set of programs & websites for a set period of time. I can't tell you what a relief it would be to have little choice but to focus on work tasks instead of get distracted. Sure, I would need to have the key to the lock in case I really needed it, but it would need to be something mildly time consuming, like answering a set of relatively sim…

I use ColdTurkey, you can block any website or program you want on a schedule, or on a timer. You can add breaks, allowances and Pomodoro style setups. You can remove them whenever you want, but you can add a password I believe, or choose the option to be unable to remove the block while it is active(if you do this, make sure you leave a way to delete it). I too wanted something like that, must solve an equation or s…

This deserves far more attention. Perhaps even a post on its own.

Ever since the rise of the attention economy I've felt more and more disillusioned with the way the internet of information has evolved. With each of us being a commodity and companies creating content that was more likely to keep us looking at the page (and ergo ads) with content that was increasingly more divisive.

Any tool that helps us remove pages from our consumption that are designed to keep us engaged in that horrendous economy is simply a must have.

Thank you.

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#14

Post by alanbernstein » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

s_gourichon wrote: post #11

Long story short, this is related to keeping focus when you're working as a freelancer, with the same laptop used for work and personal life. There's a simple solution that has been working well for me for years: have 2 local accounts on the machine, with everything separated, even different visual themes (like, bright for personal time, grey for professional time), and a different base color, e.g. blue and green. On…

I decided to try this when I got a new Macbook recently. There are a few hiccups: - Firefox simply does not work in macos after switching accounts. This seems like a completely unacceptable bug, but it has apparently existed for years. - home brew does not seem to expect to be used by two users, so I've had to switch into my personal account to use it. - configuring my os, shell, browser, etc now requires doing everything twice.

So it's not a perfect solution, but overall it's worth the effort.

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#15

Post by DyslexicAtheist » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 10:41 AM UTC

s_gourichon wrote: post #11

Long story short, this is related to keeping focus when you're working as a freelancer, with the same laptop used for work and personal life. There's a simple solution that has been working well for me for years: have 2 local accounts on the machine, with everything separated, even different visual themes (like, bright for personal time, grey for professional time), and a different base color, e.g. blue and green. On…

great advise! I am doing this now using Linux/sway and Linux/i3. The i3 (X11 based) I use for work and the sway (where some video conf apps are still not supported) is for playtime. One has a rick+morty theme the other a sober business one.

But for when I still had family and kids this set-up would be not strict enough. Now with WFO everyone is a "freelancer" and work time bleeds into private time. Here is the only thing that worked for me.

1) hardware separation: My private laptop is upstairs, no access to my work world. My work laptop is chained to my work desk.

2) my work desk is in my office

3) my office is downstairs

it has taken me some decades to refine that because initially I was sitting in the living room coding while also attending to my toddler kids. later I started hiding away in the "study" which was in the same flat but another room and I was still reachable to whenever my partner felt like popping in with a questions such as "what do you want for dinner dear?" or "do you think my black shoes go with my grey shirt", etc. After moving I hid away downstairs. In the past years I made sure there is 100% hardware compartmentalization in all my gear, and ideally that also includes modifications to location.

Finally I have managed to train my surrounding so that they no longer ask why I didn't bring a phone. To which I usually respond, so that I can be here in the moment. I don't judge others for doing it but when I sit down for a cup of coffee with anyone or am in a meeting, I would never disrespect them by browsing on my phone while pretending to listen to them.

Even more extreme my partner has stopped sending me updates on messenger because they know I prefer talking about what happened in person, and I do not want to dilute the moment. I've gone from burnt out, unfocused and distracted to in-the-moment, hyperfocused and it had a huge effect on how people treat me and how I remember things (most importantly I am able to form long term memories which multi-tasking has killed).

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#16

Post by spijdar » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:03 AM UTC

alanbernstein wrote: post #14

s_gourichon wrote: post #11

Long story short, this is related to keeping focus when you're working as a freelancer, with the same laptop used for work and personal life. There's a simple solution that has been working well for me for years: have 2 local accounts on the machine, with everything separated, even different visual themes (like, bright for personal time, grey for professional time), and a different base color, e.g. blue and green. On…

I decided to try this when I got a new Macbook recently. There are a few hiccups: - Firefox simply does not work in macos after switching accounts. This seems like a completely unacceptable bug, but it has apparently existed for years. - home brew does not seem to expect to be used by two users, so I've had to switch into my personal account to use it. - configuring my os, shell, browser, etc now requires doing every…

For anyone interested, the problem with homebrew is it relies on "/usr/local" being owned by the current user to allow installing software without needing a password every time you invoke "brew". Naturally this requires you only use that user to invoke homebrew.

Macports does things in a more conventional way, requiring sudo to elevate privileges to root before installing software, but should also work properly on a multi-user system, whereas homebrew sort of assumes a single-user install.

(I think homebrew has some capacity for being used multi-user -- years back my CS professor had a lab of macs and managed to get this working I believe)

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#17

Post by DenverCode » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:48 AM UTC

blockmarker wrote: post #7

ineedasername wrote: post #2

I'd like something I could use to lock me out of everything but a whitelisted set of programs & websites for a set period of time. I can't tell you what a relief it would be to have little choice but to focus on work tasks instead of get distracted. Sure, I would need to have the key to the lock in case I really needed it, but it would need to be something mildly time consuming, like answering a set of relatively sim…

I use ColdTurkey, you can block any website or program you want on a schedule, or on a timer. You can add breaks, allowances and Pomodoro style setups. You can remove them whenever you want, but you can add a password I believe, or choose the option to be unable to remove the block while it is active(if you do this, make sure you leave a way to delete it). I too wanted something like that, must solve an equation or s…

Any suggestions for iOS?

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#18

Post by Kelamir » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 12:06 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #2

I'd like something I could use to lock me out of everything but a whitelisted set of programs & websites for a set period of time. I can't tell you what a relief it would be to have little choice but to focus on work tasks instead of get distracted. Sure, I would need to have the key to the lock in case I really needed it, but it would need to be something mildly time consuming, like answering a set of relatively sim…

For Android, the screen pinning festure works well for me, it doesn't let me to leave the current app unless I unllock the screen. Good for the pomodoro technique.

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#19

Post by olufnaese » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

s_gourichon wrote: post #11

Long story short, this is related to keeping focus when you're working as a freelancer, with the same laptop used for work and personal life. There's a simple solution that has been working well for me for years: have 2 local accounts on the machine, with everything separated, even different visual themes (like, bright for personal time, grey for professional time), and a different base color, e.g. blue and green. On…

I tried this but found switching ttys was too easy.

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#20

Post by Symbiote » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

spijdar wrote: post #16

alanbernstein wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to try this when I got a new Macbook recently. There are a few hiccups: - Firefox simply does not work in macos after switching accounts. This seems like a completely unacceptable bug, but it has apparently existed for years. - home brew does not seem to expect to be used by two users, so I've had to switch into my personal account to use it. - configuring my os, shell, browser, etc now requires doing every…

For anyone interested, the problem with homebrew is it relies on "/usr/local" being owned by the current user to allow installing software without needing a password every time you invoke "brew". Naturally this requires you only use that user to invoke homebrew. Macports does things in a more conventional way, requiring sudo to elevate privileges to root before installing software, but should also work properly on a…

I don't use a Mac, but couldn't you put both users in the same Unix group, set group-write permissions, and set the setGId bit if it's not the default group of both users (chmod g+w -R /usr/local; find /usr/local -type d -exec chmod g+s '{}' \;) ?